Favorite Documentary and Request for Suggestions

Cafe Society
1

I have two questions for you dope dopers out there:

  1. What is your overall favorite documentary?
  2. I’d love to watch a documentary that covers, generally, early human history to the modern era. Suggestions?

It is a carefully guarded nerd secret that whenever I have the night to myself I will watch at least one documentary. After I’m gamed out, I grab my dog, Slater, prop myself against the headboard, and find out about ancient batteries, or battering rams, or solar panels, or the plight of a doomed civilization from long ago.

2

Here’s a previous thread about documentaries. There might be some stuff in that thread you would like.

3

The Up series by Michael Apted is pretty incredible. Starting in 1964 they follow a group of school children and make a new film every 7 years to see where they’re at in their lives. They’re up to 56 now I believe.

4

I really like Simon Schama’s A History of Britain.

Also, for fun and education, any history docos by Terry Jones, especially The Crusades and Medieval Lives.

If you like any of the The Teaching Company’s courses and have not seen Dr. John Hale’s lectures, I highly recommend them, especially Intro to Classical Archeology and the Greek & Persian Wars.

5

In 4 minutes and 14 seconds

6

I second this recommendation. An excellent series.

I’d also suggest Mankind: The Story of All of Us. It was a History Channel series that’s now available on dvd. It’s lightweight (which is probably unavoidable when you’re trying to do all of human history in nine hours) but good production values.

7

Or this one.

8

There was a series with Tony Robinson called The Worst Jobs in History (it’s also 2 books) where he goes around and finds terrible jobs throughout history and does them. It’s very interesting, educational, and hilarious.

A more recent doc that I loved, and may well be my favorite doc ever, is Jiro Dreams of Sushi. I don’t even know what I like about it so much, but I can watch it over and over again and never get tired of it.

9

I found last year’s Searching for Sugar Man very worthwhile.

Inside Job from a few years ago was definitely one of the best I’ve seen in a while.

10

Best Boy. Fascinating and heartwarming.

11

My favorite is probably Brother’s Keeper about the trial of a dairy farmer in upstate NY who is accused of killing one of his brothers.

12

I totally loved Ken Burns’s The Civil War. Except for the part before the station breaks when they kept saying “The Civil War will return…” :eek:

13

I liked it too because of the simplicity and positivity of it. Striving for perfection, praising achievement, etc. It’s not about shame, scandal, or conspiracy like so many [terrible] documentaries are.

I’ll add in the Adventure of English : The Adventure of English - Wikipedia

which is not to be confused with the Story of English: The Story of English - Wikipedia

14

Excellent documentary. The Paradise Lost documentaries about the West Memphis Three, also directed by Berlinger and Sinofsky, are also very good.

15

I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m a fan of The Cove. A little bloody at one point, but very moving. It’s about people slaughtering Dolphins.

16

This documentary is about a remote village in Siberia. The film document the lives of these simple folks over the course of a year.
The photography is stunning.
As the title implys these people are truly happy with their life style. Their survival skills are very impressive. This film is not Man vs Wild or Survivor Man episodes . This is real life, contrived.
A hearty thumbs up.

17

For documentary series, Mongrel Nation with Eddie Izzard. I loved this series that shows that everything thought of as “English” is from other places.

18

Starts in the Dark Ages, and definitely Eurocentric, but Civilisation made quite an impression on me as a young 'un.

19

Did you make a game out of guessing where Sir Kenneth would pop up from next, like we did?